Sea of memories, p.14
Sea of Memories, page 14
‘How was she lost?’ asked Anja.
‘Someone denounced members of the Resistance cell to the Gestapo. She was with them when they were raided. They executed everyone who was there.’ Angus’s response was terse and matter-of-fact, although the strain in his expression belied his anguish.
‘It’s a total bloody tragedy.’ Harry pressed his fingertips against his eyes, saddened by the loss of one of their colleagues, but frustrated too, at this major set-back to all their meticulous planning.
‘I’ll do it instead.’ There was no hesitation in Ella’s voice. She spoke calmly, with absolute determination.
‘No, Ella. That’s impossible. We’ll have to liaise with other agents in France, see if there’s anyone else we can deploy. Or perhaps I should go myself?’ said Angus, turning to Harry.
‘You know that’s not going to work,’ Harry said. ‘It has to be a female, otherwise the crossing guards will smell a rat.’
‘I’ll do it,’ Ella repeated. ‘I know the kit. I speak French fluently. I can go in, hand over the phone and be out again before anyone knows what’s happened. It makes sense. If they think they’ve wiped out a Resistance cell in that area then they won’t be looking for anyone else so soon afterwards. We need to stick to the original timescale; you know how vital our support is in France.’
‘Ella, it takes months to train an agent,’ said Angus. ‘What you’ve learnt in your few weeks here is nothing more than the tip of the iceberg. It wouldn’t be safe. The last thing we want is for the S-Phone to fall into enemy hands before we’ve even begun to use it.’
‘Yes, but it’s a trade-off, isn’t it? There’ll always be that risk. I’ll do it.’
Angus shook his head, and Harry chipped in again, ‘The thing is, Ella, it takes a certain mentality, a certain background to be selected to be an agent. You have to be able to take the really tough decisions when the chips are down. Would you have what it takes to destroy the kit and take a suicide pill if you were caught? I’m sorry to be so blunt, but it could come to that. Agents have to be prepared to put the greater aims before their own lives sometimes. I’ve always admired you and thought you’d make an excellent agent, but there has to be a reason they’ve not asked you to take on that role or they would have done so already: you must have strong family ties, or something else in your make-up that means they doubt you’d be capable of taking the right decisions under pressure if push came to shove.’
Banishing thoughts of her parents’ faces – they would have been aghast if they’d known what she was suggesting – Ella shook her head. ‘Look, I know how this works. I’m not stupid and I’ve spent enough time here to know what the job might entail. But I am the obvious choice for this drop; we all know that. There are two days left, so give me the extra bits of training I’m going to need and let’s get the job done.’
Harry looked at Angus. ‘She’s right, you know. D’you think it could work?’
Angus started to protest again, but Ella stood and put a hand on his arm to stop him. ‘Angus.’ She looked him straight in the eye, a look of steely determination in her green-gold gaze. ‘Please. I’ll do it.’
The plane bumped and lurched, hidden in the turbulent cover of the clouds as the pilot circled, trying to locate the drop zone and make sure it was safe to land. The original plan, to parachute the kit in, had been altered as Ella hadn’t had time to complete the necessary training. Even though landing the aircraft – albeit briefly and in the unoccupied zone – would increase the riskiness of the operation, Angus had decided it was the only option.
The plane lurched violently again. This is exactly what the kit will help to avoid, thought Ella as she crouched in the fuselage, her stomach doing its own series of loop-the-loops and her heart thrumming as loudly as the aircraft’s engines, as a powerful mixture of airsickness and nerves surged through her again. She placed a hand over the S-Phone radio transceiver that was strapped beneath her overcoat. In doing so, her fingers brushed the coat button that concealed the suicide pill. Angus hadn’t been able to look her in the eye when he’d briefed her on it.
‘I’m sorry, Ella, but I have to give you this. We can’t take the risk of you being captured and tortured. You know too much about the project. But, I assure you, it’s just a precaution. You aren’t going to be caught. You’ll be out again the next night, just as soon as you’ve handed over the phone in the safe house. The coded instruction manual is sewn into the lining here, see? And here’s your knife. Again, hopefully, you won’t have to use it. But, just in case . . .’ She’d slid the commando knife back into its sheath and fastened it to her belt.
He’d come to see her off. As the pilot was running through his final checks, Angus pulled her to him, slipping his hands beneath the bulk of her overcoat so that he could encircle her slim waist and feel the vital warmth of her one more time. ‘Come back safely, Ella. Don’t take any risks.’
They both smiled at his words: risks were exactly what they were all taking with this venture, and well they knew it.
As the plane swooped down out of the cloud cover, she replaced her hand on the harness that strapped her in, trepidation making her clutch it tightly as she tried not to think about those risks now, nor the pill concealed in the third button of her coat. She needed to keep a clear head, to remain completely focused on her instructions. Any mistakes could put other lives at risk too, not just her own.
The pilot made his steep and bumpy landing on to a tiny airstrip concealed within woodland somewhere to the south of the Loire River. Ella remembered the château at Chambord, where they’d dropped off another item of precious cargo a few years ago. Where was the painting now? Kept safe somewhere, she hoped.
She clambered out of the plane and the pilot whispered, ‘Good luck.’ She nodded, gave him the thumbs-up and then stooped and ran towards the trees, where a dimmed torch was circling, beckoning her. The plane turned, taxied, then raced along the short runway and took off, the nose lifting sharply to clear the trees again. Forcing down the panic that rose in her throat as the aircraft lifted into the air, she continued running towards the dim light.
The man was young, scarcely more than a boy really. He held a finger to his lips and motioned to her to follow. She stayed close to him, her eyes straining to make out the path in the darkness of the forest. They were moving as quickly as possible, but the terrain underfoot was rough, criss-crossed by tree-roots, and there were loose stones that made her stumble, going over on her ankle sharply at one point, making her gasp with the sudden shooting pain. She tried to take more care: she couldn’t afford to risk an injury that could jeopardise the whole plan. She walked it off, willing her limbs to move smoothly, relieved that the sprain hadn’t been worse.
Eventually, they came to a point where the darkness of the trees opened out before them, softly illuminated, and then she saw that the eerie glow came from the moon reflecting off a river that flowed quietly past. Her guide turned to her and whispered, ‘Le Cher.’ He held a finger to his lips again.
She nodded, thankful for the extra light, but recognising at the same time that it made them more vulnerable. This tributary of the Loire was the demarcation line between the occupied and unoccupied zones here, so there were likely to be Nazi patrols just over on the other bank.
They ducked back into the shadows and continued to follow a narrow path through the trees on the south bank. Finally, they reached an area where the ancient woodland had been newly felled, the massive trunks lying haphazardly amongst piles of fresh-smelling sawdust. ‘Les Boches.’ The boy gesticulated, telling her that the Nazis had been responsible for this. She surmised that they must, therefore, be approaching the crossing point if the Germans suspected there to be activity in this area that was worth clearing the forest for. They rounded a corner and, lit by the moon as it shone through a break in the clouds, the white turrets of a fine château rose up on the far bank. She looked more closely. In fact, the château didn’t only occupy the northern bank; it sat squarely in the middle of the stream, linked to a tower on the far side, and with a long covered gallery, three storeys high, borne on a series of stone arches that bridged the whole span of the river, linking it to the southern bank as well.
‘Chenonceau,’ her guide whispered. He scanned the far side of the river, searching for something. Then he shook his head and put a finger to his lips once again. ‘It’s not yet safe.’ He gestured to her to follow his lead and sit down, huddling against one of the huge felled trunks. He explained, ‘There will be a sign once the German patrols have gone. We will see a quilt hanging from one of the windows, as if being aired. Then you can go.’
It was slightly damp on the mossy ground and a phrase came into her head: The darkest hour is just before the dawn. Where did that proverb come from? she wondered, shivering slightly, thankful for her thick overcoat, which she rearranged to insulate herself from the chill that rose up from the earth and seeped into her bones. She checked her watch, tilting its face so that she could read it in the moonlight. There was still a while to go before sunrise. She was thankful for the cover of darkness, but knew that it would soon be gone, as the new day began to brush a barely perceptible opalescence across the sky beyond the pale traceries of Chenonceau’s turrets.
She ran through her instructions in her head again, mentally rehearsing each step of the operation. She needed to enter the château and cross the covered bridge. She would be met by a contact inside who would hand her a headscarf and a basket. The two of them would walk out into the village, once morning came, to make it look as if they were going to the shops. She would be taken to the safe house where a member of the Résistance would be waiting and she would hand over the transceiver and instructions, giving as much of a briefing as possible. Then the contact from the château would come back for her and they would walk back together, carrying their shopping baskets. She would be concealed inside Chenonceau until dusk, at which point she’d return here to the forest. Another guide – or perhaps this same boy – would be waiting to lead her back to the pick-up point, and the plane would return for her under cover of darkness once again.
‘Straight in and out, no fancy stuff. We’ve simplified the plan as much as possible,’ Angus had explained. ‘Once our Resistance contact has the first transceiver operational, we’ll be able to do a bigger drop, with more units that they can distribute through their network.’
All she had to do was execute this series of simple steps; yet each one was fraught with potential risks. She felt her heartbeat pick up and took a couple of slow, deep breaths to calm it. She needed to keep a clear head and not panic, no matter what happened. Being able to think straight, to make the right decisions under pressure, was what was going to get her back to the safety of Scotland. Back to her parents. Back to Angus.
No distractions, she admonished herself. She concentrated on thinking of Caroline, wishing she could tell her friend that she was here, on French soil, bringing help, doing her bit to hasten the end of this awful war.
She kept her breath slow, calming the jangle of her nerves so that she could keep her senses about her.
She pressed her fingertips into the moss-covered ground, shivering again and swallowing the lump that blocked her throat as she thought of Christophe’s beautiful, war-battered body buried all those miles away beneath this same chill soil. A cold anger flickered within her suddenly, helping to crystallise her emotions into a clear resolution to see this mission through.
Periodically, her guide peered round from behind the shelter of the tree trunk and eventually he stood, gesturing to her to do the same. She scrambled to her feet, easing the stiffness out of the tense, cold muscles of her legs. In the first faint light of dawn, a quilt had been hung from one of the upper windows of the château. He pointed to the door at the end of the covered bridge and mimed that she should knock on it four times.
She nodded and then set off, darting across the open ground. She felt completely exposed, suddenly aware that she was being watched, and not only by the guide. She sent up a brief prayer that the only other eyes that were following her progress at this moment were friendly ones from within the château.
With a thudding heart, she reached a wooden drawbridge and crossed it to the heavy door at the end of the bridge where she knocked four times, as instructed. There was a silence, filled only with the first tentative trill of bird-song from the woods behind her and the pounding of her blood in her ears. And then, almost weeping with relief, she heard the sound of footsteps approaching the door. Bolts slid back, a key turned and the door swung open a crack. She slipped through it and found herself standing in a long corridor. The windows were covered with thick blackout material and, once the door had been closed safely behind her, a lantern was lit, causing her to blink as her eyes adjusted to the sudden light.
She took a long breath, to calm the racing of her pulse, and then blinked again, in surprise this time. If at Arisaig she’d felt a little like Alice in Wonderland, here, she realised, she had most definitely stepped through the Looking Glass. Because she found herself standing in a long, elegant gallery, paved with black and white tiles whose diamond pattern seemed to swim and shift as it drew the eye to the far end. The hall’s white stonewalls were bare, lined with a series of tall, rounded niches. They were big enough for a person to conceal themself in and, as she followed the lantern-bearer, she couldn’t help casting nervous glances into the shadows on either side. At the far end was a massive carved stone fireplace with a small wooden door on each side of it. They went through one of the doors, along a corridor, which twisted and turned, and she realised she must now have crossed the river and be in the main body of the château.
They descended a staircase and pushed open another door. Ella found herself standing in a cavernous kitchen, whose arched ceiling formed part of the stone piers supporting the château. A fire blazed in the hearth and a vast cast-iron range was giving out a steady heat, as well, warming the room. The lantern-light made the brass pots and pans hanging on one wall gleam invitingly and Ella suddenly realised she was ravenously hungry.
‘Welcome to Chenonceau.’ The woman who’d led her here extended a hand. ‘We do not introduce ourselves by name, I think it’s better that way, n’est-ce pas? Sit down here and warm yourself. I’ll get you something to eat while we wait.’
Having eaten a hunk of hard bread (‘We have to make it from chestnuts these days as the Germans take all the wheat. And the coffee is made with chicory. They have reduced us to eating like animals,’ lamented the woman), spread with jam made from yellow plums to make it palatable, Ella felt her energy levels rise again. When the sun came up, the woman opened the blind that covered the kitchen’s small window and the room was flooded with the light that reflected off the river. She wished she could explore the château – it seemed a beautiful and intriguing place – but Ella knew that was impossible. She needed to remain concealed so that as few people as possible were aware of the presence of an extra person amongst the staff. The warmth of the range made her feel drowsy after her sleepless night and she felt safe enough in this friendly stronghold to close her eyes for a few minutes and doze.
Eventually, she was woken by the sound of the door opening and a pair of sturdy boots crossing the stone flags. Another woman stood before her and solemnly offered her hand for Ella to shake. Wordlessly, she passed her a headscarf in a distinctive, bright-red paisley fabric and Ella drew it over her hair and knotted it under her chin. She picked up the wicker basket that the woman had set on the floor and nodded that she was ready. The woman led her back up the stairs and through the castle’s elegant rooms to the main door which was the château’s northern entrance. They walked briskly, but not fast enough to draw attention to themselves – just two women setting off to shop in the village. Despite the temptation to look around at the château’s formal gardens and statuary, she was careful to keep her gaze lowered, as if she were accustomed to the setting. Ella had been warned to expect a Nazi presence since there were troops occupying some of the buildings in the grounds of Chenonceau and, as they crossed the final narrow bridge to the river’s north bank, she spotted the distinctive uniforms. But this morning expedition was clearly part of the normal routine at the château because the guards scarcely glanced at the women as they passed and one even raised a hand in acknowledgement.
The woman led her into the village and they turned off the main road, down a small side street. She pointed to a house with a blue door and then whispered, ‘I’ll be back for you in one hour.’ Ella checked her watch and nodded.
The door of the house was opened as she approached it by a woman who must have been watching out for her from behind the heavy lace curtains that hung in the window. She was ushered into a small parlour at the back of the house, which gave on to a courtyard hemmed in by high walls, affording complete privacy. A man stood up as she entered the room and shook her hand, his own broad palm as hard and leathery as a glove. Again, they didn’t exchange names and there were no pleasantries. She slipped off her overcoat and began unbuckling the S-Phone concealed beneath it. He inspected the component parts with interest, nodding his approval and understanding. Quickly and quietly, conscious that she needed to make every minute count, she showed him how it worked, explaining how to connect the aerial and point it directly at the receiving transceiver. She used the tip of her commando knife to unpick the stitching of the lining of her coat and handed him the silk squares on which the coded instruction manual was printed. He nodded again, smiling broadly, then kissed her hard on either cheek. ‘Mademoiselle, we know you have been most courageous in bringing us this. Your friends in France are grateful and we salute you.’
‘Use it well,’ she said with a smile. ‘I hope it will save many lives.’ She paused, imagining the friends and colleagues this man must have lost so very recently in the Gestapo’s raid. ‘And I pray for an end to this war very soon.’
